By: Yasmeen Shakour
I’ve only been making pottery for a year and a half now, but it’s completely taken over my life. I started learning around the time I moved to Chicago, my first time living in a city away from my family. It grounded my exploration by giving me a formula: meet new people + have new hobby = carve my place in my new home. I made these heavy, abstract “bowls” during my first class that were never quite big enough to fit anything. To put it simply, junk. I’d always think “It’s all crap now, but in a couple of months I’ll get good and make massive vases!” Foolish I was. The junk-making never stops.
Clay is a versatile tool; you can turn it into anything. You may think of the classic ceramic bowls, plates, and cups, sure, but in the studio one can also make furniture, figures, motor pieces, trash, bags, etc. It’s doodling in 3D! And it’s infinitely recyclable. Every good ceramic artist keeps their tiny dry trimmings, wet sloppy clay, and everything in between to re-use on their second and third attempts. It’s a very forgiving art—you can make, destroy, make, destroy, over and over again until you’ve mastered the shape you want. But the other thing to know about clay is that once it becomes ceramic through a firing process, it can last thousands of years. What else do we create with our bare hands that we know for damn near certain will outlive us by a lot? Nothing else I can think of. So the question for every ceramic artist is, what shape do I want to last hundreds of years? It’s a bit noble when you think of it like that, and it’s a damn shame every artist has to make cruddy shitty junk.
But the last thing I want to make is junk! I spend hours upon hours throwing (a pottery method) for practice, perfecting forms, trimming, and slicing my pots in half to see how I can improve. It’s quite therapeutic, just me and the clay, no music or distractions. And I begin to think of how clay, this one simple source, can be reborn from scraps — like a phoenix, or maybe like me. I’ve lived in my College Student form for the past six (yes, six) years and it’s about damn time I reshape myself. So here I am shaping a new version of me: Chicago Yasmeen. Kinda grand, right? Unlike a phoenix, but very much like a ceramic piece, the new version of me has started to show cracks. The first six months living in Chicago were perfect: so many new people to meet, cute cafes, playing pool — look at me! But now a year and a half in I’m socially burnt out, sick of beer, and unreliable as hell.
The junk-making never stops. You’d think at 25 years old, equipped with my fully developed frontal cortex and years of disappointments and heartbreaks and many misspoken moments I'd know how to push through the funk. Well, you’d be kinda right. Here comes the cheesy statement — “I’ve learned to embrace my flaws” — but it’s actually true, and I had to learn it from my good ol’friend clay and ceramic. As alluded to before, while clay can be shaped again, ceramic goes through the kiln, making it permanent. The intense heating process often forms little cracks and warps in the form. I spent hours remaking a mug and it comes out cracked? Big ,ugly crack right on the lip of the cup. I can’t recycle, I have to embrace it. I pour more hours sketching and painting something I love, sweet little kitties, to cover it. It’s a simple fix, but works wonders on my sentiment. I love this mug. It’s a prized possession now, the crack immortalized right next to the cats. And I love it all the more because of all the time, pain and anguish that went into it. What’s to stop me from applying the same thoughts to myself?
You can see more of the author’s ceramic works on Instagram @ys_pots.